


You Sleep By Windows

by WatTheCur



Category: The Lost Boys (Movies)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Fluff, Gen, Sammy is a snooper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 12:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29332605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatTheCur/pseuds/WatTheCur
Summary: A borrowed shirt lends Sam his first close look at his friends’ lives.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	You Sleep By Windows

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic is taken from the song “Sleep By Windows” by Gary Numan. The fic itself, however, was inspired by “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle” by The Smiths.

As soon as Sam trudged through the open doors, Edgar was on him.

“What happened?” His dark, narrow eyes were burning with rising anger. Sam was feeling quite warm enough, already. Though he had only just gotten soaked a few doors down, he could feel the sun had turned the grape juice to syrup, gluing his ruined shirt to his skin. He shivered at the feeling, though he was so hot. Blushing, he gazed moodily at the braid of Edgar’s necklace. 

“Got juiced by some kid from school.” He mumbled.

“Which kid?” Edgar bit out, almost before the last word had left Sam’s lips. 

“You wouldn’t know him, would you.” Sam groaned, starting to pick at the stained garment. A sickly smell was beginning to ripple from it. “Ugh he fucked up my shirt! I just got this one.” To his shame, Sam could feel his eyes beginning to sting. He silently told himself the sweet stench was mostly to blame. 

He jumped when Edgar grabbed him by the shoulder, probably more roughly than he meant to, and led him around the clusters of gawping customers, like a horse. They passed the buzzing television, and the soft snores of the elder Frogs, propped against it. They brushed by Alan, emerging through the beaded curtain, out from the living quarters. He did not say a word, but Sam felt him staring after them, as they pushed through the dim stockroom and into the popcorn yellow kitchen. The air grew heavier and the smell of burnt grass that was just detectable around the shop counter was now pungent. Edgar let go of him, suddenly, letting him stumble into the dining table. It rocked, precariously under him. 

“Take your shirt off, we’ll soak it.” In the time it took for Sam to steady himself and blink at him, Edgar had grown impatient. “You can go home in one of our’s.” 

Obediently, Sam shrugged off his backpack and began to unbutton his shirt, as Edgar put the plug in the sink. 

“Golly, Ed, what’ll the neighbours say?” He muttered, with a grudging smirk that turned to a grimace, as peeled away the sodden fabric.

“You don’t have neighbours, Sam, you live on a hill.” Edgar informed him, his hand reaching out in a pincer. He plucked the sodden bundle from Sam, dropped it into the sink and set the cold tap blasting. Noticing Sam patting his sticky chest, he snagged the damp dish rag from the counter and tossed it at him. Sam folded it over, until he found a section that had retained most of it’s original whiteness, before dabbing himself. 

“You think this’ll work?” Sam asked, though knew the answer from experience. 

“We’ll have to see.” Edgar twisted off the tap and used a stray fork to fully submerge Sam’s swimming shirt. He turned back to Sam, flicking his fingers, though no water seemed have touched them. “C’mon, I know you’ll _have_ to pick the shirt, yourself.” 

Sam smirked and threw the rag onto the rickety table. 

“You know it.” 

He followed Edgar into that dark space, between the stockroom and the kitchen, where the staircase was tucked away. Glancing to his right, through the strings of glass beads, Sam saw the silhouette of Alan, still watching, curiously from the shop. So much for customer service. 

Looking back to Edgar, ascending the stairs, it struck Sam that he had never been invited further into the Frogs’ home than the kitchen. In the spare light from the kitchen, he saw that the staircase was a mere sliver, between two verges of books. Not comics, but books, hard and paper backed, orange and musty, stacked into slanting towers on every step of the staircase. As Sam began the climb, he felt as if he were walking a tightrope, trying not to disturb the city of books. Ahead of him, Edgar wove between the towers with the same ease and bluster with which he walked everywhere, the thudding of his booted feet making the towers quiver, without falling a single one. 

Edgar took one of Sam’s flapping arms, and dragged him up the last two steps, as he had dragged him across the shop. Sam almost yelped at him, not having noticed him waiting in the darkness at the top. He almost pulled Sam onto him, but to Sam’s relief, he held sturdy. Immediately upon stepping into the dark, Sam felt as though he were in some sort of greenhouse, as the already sour and oppressive air thickened into molasses. He wondered for a moment, if Mr and Mrs Frog were not sprouting their own bud in some unseen pots on that landing. 

“This way.” Sam thought Edgar would let go of him, and have him follow the clop of his boots. Instead he slid his hand down his arm and took a more gentle hold of his wrist. He was carted a few, careful steps to the brothers’ bedroom door. Sam heard the clank of the handle, the click of a switch and Edgar’s stern face was illuminated by a slim monolith of light. For some reason, he did not open the door any wider. He slid through the crack and then tugged Sam in, easing him past him, as though he were trying to shield him from something. 

Crosses. That was what first filled Sam’s vision, when he first popped into the bedroom. The front wall was studded, floor to ceiling with crosses and crucifixes of what he thought must have been every possible material and style. Polished wood, copper, ivory, wax, minimalistic stained glass and porcelain painted in baby pinks and blues, suggestive of a woman’s, or child’s prayer corner. In some of the spaces that the brothers had not yet been able to fill with a thrift store find, there were even crosses cut out of paper and Sam was reminded of the dolls he had made back in pre-school. They had been decorated with felt tips, in a rainbow of trippy colours.

Sam looked around him, and crosses remained in vision, floating like an army of white and red ghosts. Edgar had wedged him into a corner. To his left, a large, brass bed, blackened with age. In front of him, a chest of drawers, atop which sat more crosses. A large, free standing one, about a foot high had been draped with strips of coloured fabric. Edgar’s bandanas. Beside that, sat a yellowing, felt covered wig head with her eyes coloured in blue sharpie, jauntily sporting Alan’s beret. Among the excess crosses, Sam spotted a bowl, holding a number of inconsistently sized medicine bottles, opaque with greasy finger prints, entangled with sprigs of dry, crispy herbs that Sam could not identify, but he could certainly smell. 

“Shirts are in the bottom drawer.” Edgar’s voice snapped Sam out of his exploration. “Come down when you found one.” He seemed to dither a moment, before stepping out of his room and to Sam’s surprise, shutting the door behind him.

Sam felt an odd tingle in his gut at being left in this room, alone. He had been expecting Edgar to hover over him while he selected a shirt, like a dog over a pup. He felt strangely excited. That same, impish excitement he had felt the first time he had ever been left at home, on his own. But, as his mother liked to remind him, lately, he was not a little kid, anymore. He could exercise some restraint, at least for a little while. He knelt before the bedside drawers and began to ease the bottommost open. As he did, he took a closer look at the paintwork. These drawers had obviously been painted for a child. They were decorated with a jungle scene. A bright, flaking tangle of tropical leaves and exotic animals. Sam spotted an elephant, flailing his trunk, a snarling tiger, a doe eyed giraffe crowned by a smiling monkey. Here and there, parrots flitted in a few quick strokes of red and blue. It was a shaky job, clearly hand painted, but charming. Sam’s lips twitched into a smile, and he found himself wondering who had painted the drawers for the Frogs. 

That smile disappeared when he looked down into the draw. The shirts were a slurry inside, no attempt at a fold to be seen, and the smell of detergent was ghostly, barely detectable through a veil of musk. Sam hissed, dejectedly at his options. He supposed he should not be surprised. He knew that the inside of Michael’s drawers were much the same, but then, he did not make a habit of digging through them for a fresh shirt. After some reluctant picking around, Sam fished out a thin, denim shirt. Soft with wear, but one he could not recall seeing on either of the brothers. He stood up and pushed the drawer closed with his foot, noticing as he did, a little face peering up at him from the bed. 

“Perv.” He murmured to the toy, shrugging on the wrinkled shirt. It was a lion, he realised and upon closer inspection, and it was a pillow, not a toy. It’s square body and the bald patch on it’s flat flank told Sam that. He found himself buttoning his shirt with one hand, and reaching out the prop the lion pillow up straight against the bed post with the other. Vaguely, he recalled owning a similar pillow as a toddler, but he had been a lamb, not a lion. He stroked his thumb over the mane, coarse and sparse with, Sam fancied, affection. 

His period of restraint was over, Sam decided. His eyes travelled beyond the lion and he saw, twisted against the wall with it’s head on the pillow, a dragon. A long, green dragon, who was clearly still as well loved as his lion companion. It’s belly was empty and sagging, where the bulk of his stuffing had been split apart by a tight hug. The bunched blankets formed a mound in the centre of the bed and behind that, a platoon of stuffed animals sat, staring up at this stranger in the Frogs’ room. Sam gingerly smoothed down the peaks of the blankets for a better look. A few faces he recognised, to his delight. There was Scooby Doo, Woodstock, Pink Panther, Sylvester, Micky Mouse, and he counted five Tony Tigers. There was a roll of of camouflage netting hung over the end of the bed. It was fitting for the Frogs, though Sam wondered if it’s presence was less about appearance, and more for keeping their cuddly friends from falling through the brass bars. 

The three walls, besides the wall of crosses, were papered with posters and clippings. More animals; double page spreads of yawning wild cats, snow dusted dogs and glossy coated horses. A great print of Sylvester Stallone in “First Blood”, overlooking the bed like a religious icon. There were a number of shaggy headed, sleepy eyed gentlemen, who Sam was sure had been cut from the pages of music magazines, but he could not put names to their faces. Here and there, he caught something that surprised him. Among the busty fairy queens with crystals in their clawed hands and the technicolour faces of Universal monsters, he saw Dorothy’s ruby slippers, Mr. Spock’s Vulcan salute, Miss. Monroe smiling into a champagne glass. His eyes drifting to the dim, messy back of the room, Sam spotted the familiar, somber format of a number of “missing” posters. His gut caved, and he hurriedly spun to face the opposite wall. 

He was greeted by Stars and Stripes. An American flag hung, loosely across what must have been a window. Sam could see streaks of light through the filmy fabric. As he made, carefully towards it, he walked into an unsavoury smell. Ripe and sharp, like the mudflats when the tide drew out, or the public bathrooms near the end of the boardwalk. It worsened as he neared the flag, but for some reason, it made him more determined to peek behind it. With one finger, and a wrinkle of his nose, Sam lifted the patriotic curtain. 

Then he saw where that stench was rising from. The windowsill was completely encased in a yellowing crust, shimmering in the low, afternoon sun. Layer after layer of untouched salt, formed into a shell. And atop the encrusted sill sat two glass cola bottles, half filled with a cloudy, ochre liquid, which Sam could only assume was urine. One bottle for each of them, he gathered, swallowing a stab of nausea. Through the haze inside the bottles, he picked out nests of thin, black, pointed objects. Nails, they looked like. Sam did not want to give himself time to wonder why in hell Edgar and Alan were keeping their own piss laying around, so he lifted the flag higher for a hasty look out the window. They had barred it, or they had tried to. What looked like part of an old, wooden crate had been banged into the window frame. Between the two, central planks, a cross fashioned from bleached driftwood had been tied. Through the gaps of this protective display, Sam could glimpse nothing by red bricks. The window looked out into the ally where the trash cans sat. A pretty lousy view, Sam thought, glumly. 

The rancid air around the window was beginning to make his throat tighten in disgust. He let the flag drop and tottered backwards into the room, swallowing hard to keep the sickness down. As he did, a hard point caught the back of his knee. He was startled for a moment, thinking that Edger had crept up behind him. Then he saw it was just the corner of a box, one of many, stacked against the back wall. The wall he had been avoiding. A number of boxes, as well as a bundle of sharpened chair legs, had been piled into a larger container that Sam initially thought to be a large crate. That was, until his eyes found the piped edge of a thin mattress, poking out from beneath the mound. Smudges of colour that looked like stains from a distance, upon closer inspection, he saw to be tiny, faded teddy bears, holding clusters of balloons. A crib. 

A weight balled in Sam’s stomach. It was as though that earlier tingle of excitement that swollen and solidified, into something of an altogether deeper consequence. In it’s little way, this mirrored the chill of turning that first page of “Vampires Everywhere”, compared to the icy clench of watching that curly headed bloodsucker gush like a red spring. Sam forced himself to look up at the Frogs’ tapestry of lost locals. He saw posters that he was sure he had not spotted in the store, below. Some of these were old, their corners brown and crinkled with age. Faces, young faces, from blotchy cheeked teenagers to pudgy prepubescents, all smiling down at Sam from beneath their emblazoned titles of “MISSING”. And between some of those faces, more newspaper clippings. Articles reporting deaths. Their deaths, some of them, and others of faceless children. Sam’s eyes flickered, hurriedly between the texts, shying from the clinical, but no less explicit descriptions of their discoveries. The ball in his stomach began to liquify and trickle from his core, down into his shoes, like puddle water. He was left feeling as limp as that baby’s mattress, mouldering at the bottom of the forgotten crib. 

Suddenly, Sam did not feel that he was standing inside a bedroom, but inside a world small enough to fit one. To a new acquaintance, the wall of the lost might have appeared spookily detached from the jungle drawers, the stuffed animals, even the crosses, opposite. But to Sam, it now fell into place, as part of a bittersweet whole. It hit him, harder than ever before, how lucky he felt to have known life, outside of the old Murder Capital Of The World. Edgar and Alan had never lived anywhere else. The fingers of death had found them in their cradle, crept in through their window, woven themselves into the blankets and the plush fur. This room was no place of escape, it was an assimilation. 

But, as Sam swept the room once more, he noticed the terms the brothers had laid out for Santa Carla. The faces of the missing children, a promise that they would not be forgotten, the tender toys a loud refusal to be robbed of innocent comforts, as they had been. And the crosses, the flag, the stakes in the cot, a show of readiness. Readiness to fight should death try to snatch them before time, and to defend those who caught it’s eye, first. People like Sam, who had wandered into Santa Carla, blind. Death was merely a shadow over a place that was wholly Edgar’s and Alan’s. What could have been a pit of fear, was a pocket of resistance. 

Sam stayed himself from running from the room, despite not knowing how long he had lingered there. He took a moment to check that the bottom drawer was closed all the way, before exiting the land he had been trusted to enter, whether his friends were aware of the gesture, or not. 

“Finally.” Edgar huffed, when he saw Sam come tiptoeing down the crowded staircase. “Thought you were having a catwalk show up there.” 

Alan drifted through the beaded curtain, behind Edgar, an open cola bottle in hand. Sam had to force himself not to cringe at the sight. 

“Didn’t feel like looking like a marine, or a lumberjack today, Eddie.” Sam twitched at his dog-eared collar. Edgar pursed his lips, thoughtfully, as watched Sam smooth down the denim. 

“Suits you.” Alan spoke first. Sam looked up at him, then back at his front and smiled, shyly.

“Seriously, guys, thanks for helping me out.” 

“No problem, Blue Jean.” Edgar muttered, losing interest in Sam’s new look and padding through to the kitchen. “Will you come and get your shirt, tomorrow?” He called back. 

“Yeah, for sure!” Sam gave up the battle with the wrinkled denim. He thrust his hands into his pockets and turned to Alan, who had hung around in that dingy space, watching his fruitless ironing session. Sam tried not to look at the bottle he was cradling. 

“I should get going.” Alan nodded at him. 

“Is this your shirt?” Sam asked. Alan sniffed as he looked him over, rolling the rim of his coke bottle over his lower lip.

“I’ve worn it before.” He said, at last. 

Sam hummed at the vagueness of his answer. He heaved his backpack out of the kitchen doorway and slung it over his shoulder. He hesitated, studying Alan for a moment, then he said;

“I like your animals, bud. I wish I kept some of mine.” 

Alan’s lip curled in the way it did when he felt he was being confronted, but only slightly. Then he dipped his tongue into the bottle. 

“We don’t like throwing good stuff out.” His low voice echoed down the glass throat. Sam smiled at him again, and hoped that Alan, and Edgar, who he knew was peering through from the kitchen sink, would be able to see the gratitude in it. 

“‘Course, man. See you tomorrow.”

**Author's Note:**

> I realise now, how weird and out of place the piss bottle detail must seem. So, I feel I ought to explain. The cola bottles full of urine and nails are clumsily made witch bottles (objects that ward off curses and evil magic). I do not see the Frog brothers as being the types who would partake in witchcraft, themselves, however I do believe they are superstitious and put a good deal of trust in folk religion, specifically folk Christianity, which has employed such practices. I’m not sure if witch bottles were ever in use in America, but it’s likely the Frogs would have read about them somewhere. So, they weren’t just keeping their piss for the sake of it, but they have left the same bottles there for a while, which is pretty unsavoury.


End file.
